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LEAP Privacy Petition

About the Petition

The Academy, along with the American Mental Health Alliance and the National Coalition of Mental Health Consumers and Professionals is co-sponsoring a petition on privacy in psychotherapy. Privacy in the consulting room is threatened with extinction due to decisions that have been made by the federal government, corporate medicine, and the insurance industry.

The purpose of this petition is to give voice to practicing professionals who uphold their ethical obligation to protect clients’ privacy because they know trust and privacy are essential elements of psychotherapy.

This petition campaign is one step toward a "registry" of professional opinion--a strategy to reclaim the healing arts as a collaborative endeavor of professionals and the culture, rather than letting corporations define healing modalities! The Registry uses the legal principle of "respectable minority" as a basis for affirming practice standards endorsed by a community of educated therapists rather than imposed by the legal and legislative forces of managed care, insurance, and pharmaceutical companies.

To sign the petition, click here. It will take you to the AMHA website, which houses the printable copy of the petition. We are not petitioning anyone or any institution at this time. All petition signers are placed in a registry on the web open for all to view.

Petition Text

To Whom It May Concern:

We, the undersigned psychotherapy professionals:

support client confidentiality as a fundamental principle of psychotherapy and as a basic right of our clients

object to the decline in protections for confidentiality under new federal regulation,

object to unquestioning adoption of corporate medicine’s standards of practice.

We therefore:

object to the idea that all records must be kept in a manner to be reviewed by third parties,

object to any standard requiring psychotherapists to give every client a diagnosis.

Such requirements provide little consumer protection or service, may stigmatize people, prevent people from seeking treatment or obtaining insurance in the future, unnecessarily invade privacy, and compromise patient trust.

When a psychotherapist and a client both agree, it is appropriate 1) for the therapist to keep no records at all of the therapy process or to keep them under a pseudonym and/or 2) for a therapist to forgo giving the client a diagnosis.

This petition is not intended to circumvent laws that require report of threats to human safety.